Oscars Best Picture goes to ‘La La Land’… Oops, ‘Moonlight’

The Late Late Show host let loose a very bad pun at the expense of PricewaterhouseCoopers, whose accountant handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope. The first thing I did was give him a hug. He then held the card up to the audience to prove his point, reading from it: “Moonlight, best picture”. “But to hell with dreams, I’m done with it, ’cause this is true”. The entertainment-packed ceremony showed little love for Oscar-favorite “La La Land” until mid-way into the show. Dressed as Emma Stone in La La Land, Corden recreated her character’s audition scene.

“I wanted to express to them that they had won”, he told CNN later. The night’s first victor was Mahershala Ali for his performance in “Moonlight”, making him the first Muslim actor to win a gold statuette.

PwC admitted it “failed” the Academy, with protocols for correcting the on-stage error not followed immediately.

Viola Davis didn’t talk politics when she won for best supporting actress for “Fences”: She praised the art.

Warren Beatty was holding an envelope that said Actress in a Leading Role. (Turns out there were two.) She was typically charming and gracious in post-game interviews.

President Donald Trump, who was the butt of many jokes during the Oscars broadcast, told Breitbart News that the gaffe could have been a product of a lack of concentration on getting the show right.

Apparently, he had accidentally been given a duplicate of the Best Actress winner’s card (which had just been won by Emma Stone of La La Land) rather than the Best Picture winner’s card. “You know, I’ve known Matt so long, when I first met Matt, I was the fat one”, he said, before mocking Damon for making a flop (Great Wall) and passing up the lead in the Oscar-nominated Manchester By the Sea. An unnamed guy with a headset scrambled around the stage grabbing red envelopes trying to figure out what happened. Probably should have done that before a victor was announced, though.

The mistake was perhaps the largest one ever made in announcing the awards, one host Jimmy Kimmel compared to Steve Harvey’s flubbed announcement of the victor of Miss Universe in 2015. Kimmel then expressed sympathy for the La La Land folks, suggesting they should get Oscars too. He did cut the tension pretty smoothly, though.

Horowitz gave a play-by-play after the ceremony on E!, explaining that he had taken the envelope after the victor was announced and held it the card as he gave his acceptance speech. He did, thanking his family and Damien Chazelle before tossing in a “We lost, by the way”.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Cullinan posted the Stone photograph on Twitter about three minutes before Dunaway and Beatty took the stage.

It is a little unusual that she announced La La Land as the victor, when the card clearly said “Actress in a Leading Role”.